A Dutch police officer who investigated the man tried for sexual extortion on Amanda Todd testified in British Columbia Supreme Court on Thursday. Prosecutors are beginning to present a body of evidence they say links the defendant to the harassment of the British Columbia teenager.
Appearing via video from the Netherlands, Wybren Vandermeer said he saw unique identifiers linking digital devices to the use of a wireless internet router that were examined as part of the investigation into Aydin Coban.
Aydin Coban was not guilty of five criminal charges, including child seduction, possession of child pornography and extortion.
Prosecutors say he is the man behind 22 fake social media identities used to extort sexual photos of himself from Amanda Todd to prevent an online abuser.
Wybren Vandermeer told the judge and jury he was part of an investigation called Baptism who brought him to a house in a rural holiday park about 120 kilometers south of Amsterdam in January 2014.
The police officer provided detailed technical evidence in the process in which he determined that two digital devices-both called Admins-PCs-were connected to the router.
The device’s direct link to Aydin Coban was not explained, but prosecutors said in their opening statement on Monday. that the 43-year-old man was arrested in a holiday bungalow three-story house in 2014, where evidence suggested he accessed the internet through a router at a nearby residence.
Wybren Vandermeer was the first of a supposed series of witnesses from the Netherlands, the country where Aydin Coban lived before he was extradited to Canada in 2020 to face trial.
According to the Crown, Canadian police did not identify a suspect when investigating Amanda Todd’s complaints in 2010 and 2011. But Dutch police efforts have given new life to the case. cases in 2013 and 2014.
They first searched Aydin Coban’s house without him, then returned to arrest him, taking a desktop computer, laptop and hard drive.
Crown Prosecutor Louise Kenworthy said footage of the devices was reviewed by a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) forensic specialist who found evidence of several accounts being used to harass Amanda Todd despite deleting large amounts of documents.
Louise Kenworthy said there was evidence that Dutch devices at one point contained videos containing filenames Amanda at Amanda Todd.
Aydin Coban was not charged in the death of Amanda Todd. He watched the proceedings from the inmates ’box, isolated behind a glass panel. A few dipa away, on a bench in the back of the courtroom, Amanda Todd’s mother, Carol Todd, was watching her.
Outside the courtroom, Carol Todd said she was happy with the emergence of details of her son’s trial. It clarifies exactly what sextortion and exploitation arehe says.
Starting Monday, the trial is expected to last approximately seven weeks.
Based on information from Jason Proctor
Radio CanadaMartin Leclerc
Source: Radio-Canada
